Mykola Nesenyuk: "There was only one intrigue in the Argentina-Croatia semi-final: when will Messi be awarded a penalty"

The well-known journalist Mykola Nesenyuk commented on the results of the 2022 World Cup 1/2 final match between the national teams of Argentina and Croatia (3:0).

"On the eve of the semi-final between Croatia and Argentina, there was only one intrigue - at what exact minute the referee will award a penalty kick to the Croatian goal for Lionel Messi to score his next goal. This infamy has continued since Argentina's first match against Saudi Arabia - Messi has already scored four penalties in six matches at the World Cup finals.

It is hard to believe that it was once not so. Do you know how many penalty kicks the famous Pele took in the tournament that won Brazil in 1970? None! The same goes for other heroes of those times from the German Gerd Müller to the Italian Paolo Rossi. Poor Diego Maradona had to score with his hand for the English because there was no such practice back then - to drag the right team to the final with the help of the penalty kicks!

And there was once another Argentina! A model team of 1978, then convincingly beaten in the final by the shamelessly hyped "Flying Dutchmen". She won without any help from the referees. And what football players Argentina had then! Daniel Pasarella, Alberto Tarantini, Ubaldo Fillol, Osvaldo Ardiles, Leopoldo Luque and, of course, the incomparable Mario Kempes, whom I had first seen two years before in Kyiv, when he scored the only goal against the USSR team in a test match at the current "Olympic".

But Argentina played a completely different football, not like it is now. That football did not have, or almost did not have, those "little football tricks" that this game is permeated with today. Those Argentinians played honestly and, I would say, somewhat noble. They reminded me of the musketeers from the d'Artagnan movies, helped by the long hair after the fashion of the time and the blue and white T-shirts that looked a lot like the blue and white cloaks of the king's guards!

What to call the current Argentinian football players who are stubbornly pulled up to keep the same Messi on TV screens for longer, in which crazy millions have been invested? There can be no doubt about their high skill - all of them from Messi to Alvarez are outstanding masters. But by no means the Musketeers. Doctor Grinstein from Hašek's novel about the soldier Shveik would say about them Das ist Simulantenbande, if exaggerating, but not by much," wrote Nesenyuk on his page on the Facebook social network.